Educators say that teachers can change lives, and if that’s the case, one Ohio University Southern professor will be able to change people throughout the globe with a high-tech class spanning two continents.

Dr. Dave Lucas, a professor who regularly takes students to study foreign countries, will be going on a field trip of his own, teaching a high-tech class in North America and Asia over the World Wide Web.

Lucas will teach the class through the Internet at Ohio University regional campuses, the Global University Peace Boat, which houses 30 Korean and Japanese students and in Hong Kong.

“We’re going to be triangulating the education process internationally, and it’s the first time it’s ever been done,” Lucas said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

The class is called “Cultural Inquiry in Various Contexts” and will deal with global issues.

“It’s things like how the World Health Organization impacts people globally,” Lucas said. “So our students here, who may not know too much about the World Health Organizations suddenly take a look and say ‘Wow, I’ve seen this from an American perspective, but I didn’t know this from a Japanese perspective,’ same for the Chinese students, same for the Japanese students.”

Lucas won’t just teach from America, he’ll be traveling to all the locations that will be participating in the class.

“I want to make sure that everybody’s on the same page as far as curriculum, plus, this is really exciting, they’re using my textbook that I wrote that’s just now coming out,” Lucas said.

Students will be able to interact with Lucas through an online message board, and Lucas plans to post snippets from his daily lectures that can be downloaded by any student in the class. There will also be video portions of lectures.

The class will begin in January, but Lucas will have to leave his home Christmas Day to travel to the Peace Boat to begin the globe-spanning class.